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I'm toying with the idea of getting my beloved Cotic Roadrat restored as it's got early hints of rust and a tiny dent. But I think I would only do this if I could also do some mods.
1) remove the redundant cable guide. Seems straightforward
2) change the dropouts to a 142 mm through axle.
The current horizontal dropouts with hanger and disc mounts don't really do it for me. A week of riding it single speed has reminded me why I sold my single speed road bike.
Years ago my dad had an old Reynolds frame widened from 120 - 135 mm. That worked fine (except the frame builder forgot to add a gear hanger or any cable guides!). But I dont know whether the same would work with the additional complexity of having to align disc mounts.
Any advice gratefully received.
Don't see why not - not going to be cheap tho, and not the lightest/best of frames?
I've swapped dropouts on a frame and modified ones to take through axle. It's easy enough but costs more than you'd want to pay so hardly any frame builder will offer it.
The Roadrat has a very specific plate dropout that attaches to the seatstay quite a long way from the axle centre, and a chainstay attachment that caps the end of the tube at an angle. You'll be very lucky if those Bear dropouts join in the right places.
If I was doing my own then I'd probably machine something to braze into the existing dropouts and just cut / reshape what is already there rather than try to remove from the tubes.
But in all honesty I just wouldn't bother - 142mm bolt through is gaining you nothing over qr and the existing dropouts other than slightly faster wheel changes.